Last year, on the 21st of September, the International Day of Peace, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and Borderfree Street Kids reached out to 100 Afghan labourers, cooking and serving them a meal. To follow-up, microloans were given to five of the labourers to start their own small street businesses.

This year, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and Borderfree Street Kids reached out to the visually impaired and blind students at Rayaab (Rehabilitation Services for the Blind Afghanistan ). They brought MP3 players as gifts to 50 visually impaired students. The students will use the MP3 players to listen to recorded school lessons and educational programs. Rayaab is an Afghan non-governmental organization run by Mr Mahdi Salami and his wife Banafsha, who are themselves visually impaired.

The Afghan Peace Volunteers and Rayaab began their friendship in 2012: Visually impaired Afghans for a better world : “And also, my message to the world is to get integrated to each other, in peace, in love and in kindness, and to throw away any hatred. And try to live in a very peaceful and very honourable and very kind environment in order to make a better world. Thank you. Love you all!” Mahdi Salami, Deputy Director of Rayaab, Rehabilitation Services for the Blind Afghanistan.

Below is a photo essay of this year’s renewal of friendship among Borderfree Afghan Street Kids, visually impaired students of Rayaab, and teachers from both groups. It is followed by a video invitation for you to ‘Touch a Colourful Afghanistan’.

With regards to human hope in Afghanistan,

most of the world is blind.

We don’t see Sonia’s daily effort to live meaningfully,

as mainstream media have replaced our eyes

and is just as obsessed with war as politicians are,

as if war is attractive.

We overlook the resilience Nature demonstrates

despite what international militarists are doing to her and to people,

plain people, Afghans, Syrians, Yemenis,

or ‘the others’ on different killing lists.

We don’t even hear what’s obvious,

“We are human beings.”

Not objects, not targets.

Banafsha ( right ) , the Director of Rayaab, is also pursuing a Master’s degree in International Relations

For Banafsha, a sound is a colour,

touch is colour,

understanding is colour.

A bullet isn’t a colour….

“Bombs frighten me,”

Hadisa, a volunteer teacher, said at our meeting.

The watchman of another school for the visually impaired was killed

by extremists who entered via the yard of the blind,

into the American University Hadisa studies at,

to wreck havoc,

drowning in a failed tit-for-tat war,

shoot, anger, shoot, revenge.

All that was achieved

was a bloody red.

Mehdi Salami played the keyboard while the visually impaired students sang

We’ve even forgotten that Afghans sing,

that music can be heard everywhere,

the bees, the wind, the transformed caterpillars,

and leaves turning their faces towards the sun.

While they create tunes, they serve the Earth too,

pollinating, producing sweet seeds of future life.

“The blind use their hands to touch,

to make out the shape of a flower,”

Mursal said, closing her eyes momentarily to imagine that world.

When Mursal heard the keen voices of the students

singing verses which lyricized the Dari alphabet,

she felt that “my heart had become very full”,

and she cried.

Mursal cried when she heard the blind students sing together

Mehdi ( right ) asked that we merge our worlds through respect

“If we can embrace our differences through respect,

we naturally become one,

the blind and the sighted,”

Mehdi Salami, Rayaab’s Deputy Director encouraged.

It made inspiring sense that

if we can bridge ‘darkness and light’,

we can merge all other diversities.

Maryam was sick, and still had an IV cannula on her hand,

but she so very much wanted to come,

and to share that, “I needed 3 or 4 persons to bring me here.

Today, I can manage on my own with a white stick.”

She overcame by the sense of touch, and some human support.

Trees provided her a walking aid,

to free her from our doubts.

Maryam ( left ) came despite being sick, with an IV cannula still attached to her hand

Maryam received her gift of an MP3 player with gratitude

Sonia, with soya biscuits which Rayaab served us with refreshments

Tina Ahmadi, in saying thanks and goodbye, asked to meet us again

Spending International Peace Day, 21st September 2016, together

The Afghan Peace Volunteers and Street Kids saying goodbye to the students of Rayaab

This was not a typical festive ‘first world’ outing, as its need and idea arose not from leisure, but from trauma.

Recently, Hadisa was broken after an ‘endless’ night of crouching nervously in the dark of her University dormitory, while bomb blasts and gunshots were ending precious lives only a hair’s breath away.

Nemat, in a safe space which softened Hadisa’s distress, remembered looking at a heavily-breathing comatose father in a bare Afghan government hospital ward with no monitoring devices. I was well aware of Nemat’s questions over his own undiagnosed lower limb weakness and limp, when he asked me in resigned desperation, “Do you think I should transfer him to another hospital?”

Ali, listening to and comforting Hadisa, had also just lost a loved one too, his older brother, Sultan. Sultan was killed by at least four bullets.

The Afghan Peace Volunteer community agreed unanimously, “Let’s go for a picnic, or let’s just be together for a day.”

Who can Habib trust, especially after his father was killed in a suicide bombing attack a few years ago?

“Active volunteers…Those we know well.”

“Where should we go?” No satisfactory answers – there are no ‘guarantees’ anymore. Decision on the picnic location kept changing, even till 10.00 p.m. the night before, “My uncle told me that there’s unrest between an Uzbek group linked to the Vice President and a Tajik group, over a re-burial. Can’t we change location?” Hadisa called Ali, who rang Abid, who rang a relative…

“Let’s decide tomorrow morning, just before we leave,” were their thoughts as they and the night retired.

Basir said early the next morning, “I just checked, and it seems alright to go.” His wife had initially decided against going, as they now have another new life to take care of, Barbud their son.

Whenever the other bus overtook us, for good-spirited relaxation, Muqadisa and Nida would cheer, “Zek, get up, dance, we can’t be the boring bus!” I noticed Hadisa was in ‘knots’ of laughter over the transient ‘roar’ from our bus.

Such were our fluctuating feelings throughout the day at Salang Pass, next to the its river which arises from the Hindu Kush mountains; the communty’s recovery presented exuberant imagery for each of our inner healing.

sharing food, water, shelter, greenery, healing, reconciliation, happiness and stories with one another

I am you. You are we.

Relate! Relate! Relate!

Relate! It’s a Re-mergency!

Connect. It’s critical.

Connect people, connect the dots.

Dear friends of our human family,

With your support, over the past one year, we have found 908 friends from 67 countries. Please continue to help us find friends from every country in the world.

In Kabul, we are bringing together multi-ethnic Afghan youth from all 34 provinces in Afghanistan, to join Earth GEN (Green, Equal and Nonviolent) in celebrating the International Day of Peace on the 21st of September 2016.

In Afghanistan, we the Afghan Peace Volunteers, realize that a root cause of war is that people across the world don’t treat one another as equals. The earth and our human family has been exploited, divided from one another, de-humanized and made to live disparate and self-interested lives. We, as members of the human family with no political or religious aims, wish to change this through relationships! Relating will heal and liberate!

The Hands of #Earth GEN

#Enough! Let’s be friends on our borderfree Earth!

Barath Khan ( Afghan Pashtun ) and Zekerullah Ahmadi ( Afghan Hazara ) are the hands forming the Earth in the photo. They used the Borderfree Blue Scarf to form the Earth and green powdered paint to mark out the continents. From years of war and politics, some Pashtun and Hazara communities are prejudiced against one another, and likewise among the Tajiks, Uzbeks and other ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Barath and Zekerullah are changing this social dynamic. They lived together in Kabul for three years, in an intentional multi-ethnic community of nonviolence, which was an effort of the Afghan Peace Volunteers to exemplify the peaceful human family.

]]>http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/2016/08/afghan-street-kid-habib-says-food-comes-from-the-land/feed/0Afghan friends: For a moment, I didn’t know what to wish for youhttp://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/2016/08/afghan-friends-for-a-moment-i-didnt-know-what-to-wish-for-you/
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/2016/08/afghan-friends-for-a-moment-i-didnt-know-what-to-wish-for-you/#commentsMon, 01 Aug 2016 08:38:28 +0000http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/?p=4025Afghan friends: For a moment, I didn’t know what to wish for you

Mahdi drew what he wanted to become: a doctor – white coat, blue tie

In 2015, Mursal drew and wrote: I want a School of Nonviolence

Ibrahim ( extreme left ) said #Enough! War, along with other Afghan street kids

Mahdi and Mursal,

today, when I heard the blast of another suicide bombing in Kabul,

I didn’t know what to wish for you.

I was irritated, rather,

my thoughts scattered in multiple fragments,

because,

not only did I need to know that you were safe,

it hurt me to think of how the sensational images

will traumatize you, again.

Mahdi was back polishing boots last summer, together with his cousin, Ismael

With another street kid, Nisar, Mahdi volunteered to water trees at Kabul Peace Garden

He also helped out in the winter duvet project, distributing duvets to poor families.

Here, he is sitting on the duvets at the back of a truck, bringing the duvets to a poor residential area

Mahdi ( left ) was among many street kids who destroyed and buried toy weapons,

and who wrote on the palms of their hands, “#Bas! #Enough!”

Mahdi pulled me aside,

and I was hoping he had good news for me,

as the Street Kids School teachers and I had been encouraging the students

to enroll in Afghan government schools.

“I saw a horrible thing, Hakim.

A young gymnasium staff next to the canteen where I work

was found dead, hanged, murdered.

He was just a kid,

and his body looked horrible….”

Mahdi’s hoarse voice was jittery, and heavy.

“The canteen is shut down now,

and my dad is making arrangements

for some other full time work in town.”

School?

Mahdi looked away…,“I need to help my family.”

Recently, from not being able to pay the rent,

Mahdi’s family shifted to a cheaper room, with a less exacting landlord.

Mursal being interviewed after the Afghan Street Kids Protest Walk in Feb 2015. She and about 70 other street kids for a school for 100 street kids. After a government official had explained that the government had no plans or funds for such a school, the Afghan Peace Volunteers decided to fulfil Mursal’s dream by establishing the Borderfree Street Kids School, which enrolled 100 students in 2016.

Mursal served the Afghan Peace Volunteers tea after shifting some office equipment and furniture to new premises

Mursal ( centre ) has become quite a young organizer;

here, she had planned for and run a special program to thank the volunteer teachers of the Borderfree Street Kids School.

Mursal has learnt to ride a bicycle. Twice, she joined the Borderfree Cycling Club to ride in the streets of Kabul

Mursal approached me and Ali confidently,

and said that she had a proposal,

“I want to organize a street protest,

to demand that the authorities stop hitting the street vendors with their batons.”

How could they chase the labourers away

from their only source of livelihood?

Yes, a 14-year-old Afghan girl, and already ready to speak out,

despite a generally conservative Afghan society.

I can see her discovering her own passion and gamut of feelings;

I’ve seen her cry as if releasing the

dreams racing through her mind,

and I’ve heard her read earnestly prepared prose.

Once, in front of a video camera

held by another street kid, Deeba,

she spoke so assuredly.

They were in a room all by themselves where,

especially for a girl,

Mursal could enact another reality

without worrying about

adult reactions and plans.

Ibrahim ( left ) was initially a little shy in class

Gradually, he began to warm up to others and the teachers.

He also understood quickly, like all Afghan kids, the need to end war. On his palm was written “#Bas! #Enough!”

This was his profile picture for the school register. Behind him was a painting of a ship at sea (insert). Little did he know that he was to make a fatal crossing of the Aegean Sea, while he and his family tried to reach Greece in seeking asylum, fleeing the lack of work and security in Kabul.

Insecurity, exploding like this senseless massacre in Kabul,

stacks up with the lack of work and hope,

and drove Ibrahim, his family and about 146,000 Afghans from

their places of birth, traditions, tea and weddings,

to find shelter in Europe,

as the second largest group of asylum seekers after Syrians.

The ‘powers’ are tearing Syria apart,

in the same way they have successfully shredded Afghanistan.

You were too young, like many others,

but family meant: you fled as a family,

and after you no longer turned up at the Centre,

one day,

word came through your grandma in Kabul,

who was distraught and shaking like paper burnt to grey ash,

“crying without pause for days and nights,” she said.

“Dear Ibrahim, such a good boy, is gone,

gone, how is that possible?

Drowned.”

She sighed, wiping off the stream from under her eye bags.

“How am I supposed to stop this pain?”

Ibrahim’s grandma was broken. Lost.

Ibrahim, I knew what to wish for you,

but you never saw any sea before,

and the money-makers from these wars

would never visit your grave,

and certainly not without blaming you and your mother,

or, if you had survived, they would have considered you a nuisance,

a dispensable number.

My wish was: “I hope you have a school you can enjoy going to.”

but that’s impossible now,

and when another bomb went off this bloody afternoon,

killing at least 80,

in a sea-less land,

I was reminded that your family was willing to risk all,

to journey from possible death to possible death,

and I felt incredibly angry at what we are doing to fellow human beings,

to the children of the world.

Mahdi is given monthly food gifts of rice, oil and other staples. Here, he is standing next to a poster of the Food Bank, in which he is featured polishing boots in the streets of Kabul. The Food Bank is an initiative of the Afghan Peace Volunteers to enable Afghans to help Afghans, especially the most vulnerable.

Mahdi’s family were refugees in Iran who had returned to Afghanistan when Mahdi was three. In May 2016, Mahdi finally enrolled into the 7th grade at a Kabul government school ( background ). I was so proud of his determination, as I accompanied him to register at the school, and though he was frowning in this photo, he was feeling very excited, telling me, “I will work hard, Hakim. Thanks for coming with me.”

Mahdi and Mursal in class a year ago. If not change for the new Afghan generation, then for which generation?

I had travelled to Russia in June 2016 with U.S. citizens and peace activists, including members of Centre for Citizen Initiatives led by Sharon Tennison, an effort that has sought to build peaceful relations through citizen diplomacy with ordinary Russians